But typically when discussing bugs, media stories are served with a large portion of amused disgust. (Just look at the picture from the above-referenced Sierra Club magazine and BBC News articles: a Lice Cream truck, seriously?!?) Part of this is cultural, another part is smart business: shock and entertain the audience and they’ll keep reading.

So it was funny to see the creation of this disgust first hand at a bug-eating reception at the Dutch Embassy this past summer. One journalist, Jenny Dorne of WJLA, couldn’t fathom eating bugs and was captivated by Alida Maandag, the wife of Dutch entomologist Marcel Dicke—a leading proponent of incorporating insects into the western diet. Maandag quietly ate several crickets for the journalist while she videotaped the whole thing, scripting each bite to get the most shock value. Meanwhile, Mrs. Dicke stood there complying with a bemused look on her face, clearly thinking “what’s all the fuss?”

Perhaps this will be the way that bug eating gets attention and eventually goes from strange eccentricity to fun food event to normal part of the diet. It certainly was interesting to watch how people reacted to the insect cuisine at the event—the cricket guacamole, the cicadas and asparagus on a stick, the mealworm pancakes. Again mostly with good-humored disgust, but as most guests realized when they tasted the bugs (if they tried them—Ms. Dorne outright refused), bugs don’t taste like much when integrated into a complex recipe.

As Dr. Marcel Dicke and others have pointed out, the easiest way to integrate insects into the western diet will be through processed foods where the distinct crunch and taste of bugs is lost and just the healthful and sustainable source of protein is preserved.

And that has already moved forward to some degree in the Netherlands—at specialty grocery stores shoppers can buy freezedried bug patties (like other frozen burger patties, whether hamburger, soy, Quorn, or chicken). At the event there were even samples of Chapul, a new energy bar for sale in the U.S. that has cricket bits in it. And it was pretty good—though no bugs could be seen or tasted at all, which was probably the point.

All of this imagines a factory farmed bug future where agribusiness grows and sells insect protein at a large scale to fill the processed foods that now mostly have ground up chicken, pig and beef bits in them. Certainly an improvement, ecologically speaking, but considering how unhealthy processed foods are—filled with salt, sugar, preservatives and artificial flavors and served in unsustainable and often toxic packaging—maybe not so large a step forward as we could take.

Bowl of mealworms, awaiting being added to the pancakes made by Daniella Martin of www.girlmeetsbug.com (Photo by Erik Assadourian)

During the event there was long discussion of a future of factory-farmed bugs—which Dr. Dicke assured the audience was just fine as insects like crowded conditions and their diseases don’t easily migrate to humans like the diseases that affect current livestock do. But can’t we do better? Massive amounts of waste will still be created—will it pour down rivers like chicken, pig, and cow manure currently does?

In colonies of millions of bugs, conditions will be ripe to spread new insect diseases, which may in turn mean continuing reliance on huge amounts of antibiotics or fungicides for our new livestock (even if there’s no risk of these diseases spreading to humans). And perhaps worst of all, the industrial model, with its concentration of profits, will continue—where Big Ag can employ small numbers of underpaid laborers to maintain their billions of bugs.

The most exciting moment for me at this event came when Dr. Dicke mentioned in passing that 20,000 households in Thailand make part of their living from raising crickets or other bugs. Now THIS is the future I’d like to see. Everyone can raise a fish tank full of crickets off their own food scraps and rotting plant matter found near their house and probably generate a free pound of animal protein every month or so—just enough to live healthy and to lower overall household costs (while having a positive ecological effect as factory-farmed meat is displaced by freegan crickets). This report details small-scale insect farming in Thailand at length. I could imagine as the US consumer economy implodes, lots of American entrepreneurs will turn to small-scale farming (as is happening in Greece today) and bugs may become part of their crop mix.

It is an intriguing question: how does one go about raising a small quantity of crickets for personal consumption: what are the hours of work time needed to sustain your flock? The inputs? Will food scraps and foraged bits of yard waste from your and neighbors’ yards or local parks be enough or like larger-scale cricket farmers would one need to buy chicken feed (which would change the financial equation dramatically)? With hamburger at just $3.50 a pound, small-scale production of crickets probably can’t pay for itself right now (not if time costs are factored in and environmental externalities aren’t), but once food is no longer easily or cheaply purchased at the local grocery store, bug farmers may be some of the best equipped to survive food shortages. That’s food for thought, even if you have to catch it first.